The weekend is going so, so nicely. Drove up last night in the rain while we listened to Pulp records and sang along. The house was freezing when we got here, so we promptly lit a fire, opened a bottle of wine, and watched VH1 until 2:00 in the morning. It was so incredible. It's pretty amazing to actually have a place of our own, if not for a few days only.

I brought 20 blank minidiscs with me up here, and I'm already on disk #13. It's like choosing any music you want for free, but you only have The Wherehouse to choose it from. It's crap that I'd kind of like to have around, but I'd never buy. I think I'll only include relevant releases over on my new arrivals section, otherwise I'd replace the entire thing with Pink Floyd, New Order, Portishead, the Talking Heads, Catherine Wheel, and of course, A Flock of Seagulls. I think right now I have all the things I like in the world: a house, a computer, free music, VH1, a Sharks game on TV, a cat, Lucky Lager, and Miss Rodeo America.

I wrote a post earlier today but left it on the notepad on the computer at work. Oops. I hope nobody decides to go through there and read .txt files. I have little to worry about.

We're off to a classy dinner, and then up north where we are house-sitting all weekend in the most perfect 1950s little house with a woodburning stove and a cat named Simon. It's going to be so, so nice. I'm hoping to get some work done on this site while we're up there. Ok, I'm too hungry/excited to type anylonger, so I'll see you up where there are cows and pigs and sheep and everyone says hello when you walk down the street.

What a wonderful day. Actually, make that a fucking wonderful day. Nothing amazing happened, I didn't stumble on a treasure chest full of cash. It was just one of those things, you know? I'll chat about it later, we're waiting for ch to pick us up for the Amscray show tonight. I'm not playing with the band (yet), but it should be nice to see the band from the floor instead of from the stage.

So, on Wednesdays, I've been listening to some of the CDs I usually don't listen to. Stuff I think I should trade in or sell, but still stuff that interests me enough to give one more test run. Stuff like the last Rainer Maria album doesn't fit this category, it is already in the "to go" stack. However, I listened to every Green Day album, one a week, and I kept them all. Just one of those things, I guess. Now I've started in on my rather extensive J Church collection. I have alot of stuff, they've been one of the most prolific bands I've ever known. I bet I have at least 20 7"s of theirs, and that's probably less than half of the signles they released. Anyways, I'm totally digging them still. Today I listened to Prophylaxis and loved every second of it. I wasn't too into their later pop-punk-hi-we're-on-nofx's=label junk, but the early 90's stuff is so gritty, so Mission District. They were *the* good band from the Mission (underneath the unapproachable Jawbreaker). Nothing else captured the spirit of that area at that time. It's sad that the dot-com invasion has screwed it over so much. Now all the kids just run from the yuppies. It's either that, or work in the kitchen.

Remind me to tell you about the punk kid that I met today. I'm tracing the goodness back to him.

Work is busy. Sometimes I wish for it, other time I don't. Right now, I could use a bit of relaxation instead of hurried stress.

Fourth street smells like a cafeteria this morning. That air of oil, frozen food, and tater tots keeps entering my nose every time I walk outside. I worked in the school cafeteria in elementary school. I loved doing it, I felt so grown-up selling peanut butter bars and cookies to little kids at my little snack-bar window. I don't think I've ever seen or heard of a Fiestada since elementary school, but I can still taste the cheese on them. I wore a little paper chef's hat with plastic gloves while I gave kids fruit, pizza, hamburgers, and milk. I wish I grew up in France so that I could have wine with lunch. I've always thought of myself as "working class," ever since those days. I took over the job for a friend of mine whose parents wouldn't let him work in the cafeteria. He was a rich kid, it wasn't his fault. His dad was a bank founder/president and his mom was an interior decorater. Very tre chic for my neighborhood. They didn't like the idea of their son having to work, gasp, menial labor. Perish the thought! So, I got to take over for him since I begged and pleaded. I read faster than most of the other kids anyway, so I just finished whatever assignment we had at the moment and trucked down to the other side of campus with my hall-pass and feeling of power.

I couldn't go the entire day without updating anything. However, I really don't have anything to say. Today proves, once and for all, that weekdays are dull as dirt compared to weekends. They just don't compare. For content: I reviewed the Bright Eyes E.P. Hold your mouse over the picture to the left.

Oooh, ooh. greg is having a contest to celebrate his site's one-month anniversary. Contests are the best, mostly contest where you get sent something in the mail. I entered a Radiohead contest on the Capitol Records website (big 'ole record labels don't deserve the link) and months later I received to awesome lithographs with Kid A artwork on them. Which I promptly framed, put on my wall, and then checked Ebay to see how much they were worth. Nanette is having a contest too, perhaps these two are in cahoots.

It's getting late, and I still have to practice the new keyboard parts before the big rehersal tomorrow. We have a show on Wednesday, but tomorrow will dictate if I play along or not. This means I should stop typing here right about

Back from the weekend mountain trip. Kept falling asleep in the passenger
seat on the way up after I ate too much fatty-food at Denny's on the hill (one of my old high-school suburban hangouts) consisting of chicked strips, french fries, and a chocolate milkshake. So much for my aura of good health and even better eating habits. Sometimes, when you're such a food-snob as myself, you crack and spend a whole weekend eating badly. This is what I did, and I don't feel at all guilty. Well, maybe just a little.

Did sporty-snow activities all day on Saturday. Nothing grand or storymaking happened,
although I swear that I heard some bro in the parking lot of the ski-resort yell "Man! I was
SOOOOOO fucked up at that Pearl Jam concert in Missoula last year!" I even repeated the quote
a couple times as to remember it. It worked. Saturday night we watched home-movies from Miss
Rodeo America's high-school days. It was truly grand, hilarious, touching, and loads better
than anything The Real World could ever hope for. Sometimes, while writing/taking pictures/making lists, I often wonder if there's really a point to it. Now I know that there is, all of this documenting
has so much worth. It has so much value to me now that I can't even begin to imagine what it will
be like in 7 years. Drank many-a-beer and played a game of Rummikub that lasted for what seemed like
hours, with a tragic loss on my part. Slept happily and heavily, dreamt about work (ouch), and the
friends who don't call any longer. It didn't seem to matter in my dream.

Woke up late this morning, video-taped danger sledding down an icy slope that ended in many bruises. I was
sort of glad I opted out of much of the activity, but I did engage in a toboggan run with M.R.A. and
got shards of snow up my pant legs. Drove home in the swank-mobile, complete with seat warmers and my own
personal reading light, just like on an airplane! Stopped and ate more trashy food, and get this, not one
but *two* shakes were downed by yours truly. Waiter came around to our table during desert time (huge
sundaes and bananna splits) and said "Hey, they made two shakes by accident, do you want them?" Hell yes I
did, and said so right away. I had already finished my normal dose of one chocolate shake, but engaged in
sucking down an entire vanilla shake after that almost in one breath. I'm still alive. Got home, hugged, and
then parted ways for two weeks when almost the entire crew is heading up to the Oregon coast.

New MP3 of the week. Of course. I swear, this is the last time I'll toot my own horn (a saying I think I've
said about a dozen times this weekend) about my timeliness. A really great song by the Northwest's Octant.
This record was on my top-ten list for that year, but I hadn't listened to it in awhile until I stuck it in my
CD player on Friday and proceeded to dance around the pharmacy floor. This recording is amazing, Satisfact's
Matthew Steinke and friends invent the instruments, play them, record them, and then produced short films to go
along with them. Quite an impressive feat. Clunky and heavy on the synths, Shock-No-Par sounds like what would
happen if all the employees at Roland got drunk at a christmas party in the 80's and went crazy with sounds. I like to list
the instruments played in order to give an idea of the music: the ad3 robotic percussion unit, the electrified string board,
the random tone generator, the photo theremin, and the light-modulated synthesizer. Pure fucking electro coolness, with
many pop choruses thrown in. If you like 80's pop, or Moog-Music, or strange analog tinkering, you really can't go
wrong here. Damn, I hate it when I start sounding like a quote from a record label print ad.